Author Archives: Van-a-gram

12th grader Sabrina Brady of Sparta, Wisconsin won the “Doodle for Google” national contest with the above submission.  Well deserved.  It’s the Google Banner for today.  You can read about her story here.

This guy pulled a layman’s “Gosnell” and gave his girlfriend, six week pregnant, abortion pills.  She lost the baby.  He is now being charged with murder and could spend the rest of his life in jail.

The son of a fertility doctor has been accused of tricking his pregnant girlfriend into taking an abortion pill and killing their unborn child.

John Andrew Welden, 28, faces a first-degree murder charge and a life in prison for allegedly giving the woman a bottle of abortion-inducing drugs, which he told her were harmless antibiotics.

His now ex-girlfriend, Remee Lee, was six weeks pregnant

Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood wipes out the equivalent of the entire city of Cincinnati every year without so much as a second glance from law enforcement.

More below the fold…

This is the problem with both guest-worker and “immigration reform”: It opens the door to people AND significant problems.  Increasingly, immigrants (legal or otherwise, notably the latter)  do not want to adapt or adopt  even the most fundamental aspects of the American lifestyle.    The “push 1 for English” routine has now been expanded to some kind of legal expectation that your employer must  communicate with you in YOUR native language.  Not only are you no longer expected to learn English, apparently you can demand to be spoken to in Spanish.

Spanish-speaking custodial workers at the Auraria Higher Education Center in Colorado, a campus that serves students from three colleges, are suing based on what they say is a failure of their bosses to communicate with them in their native language, according to published reports.

…the attorney representing the workers, said that the center only communicated with its workers in English – which had resulted in men suffering injuries on the job as well as changes in their schedule that were detrimental to them.

More below the fold…

In which case we have some pretty heavily armed schools.  So, you’re asking, just when is a pencil considered a weapon?  Perhaps its when you stab someone with it.  Or shoot out of a tube as a ‘blow dart’ kind of  projectile.  Or sharpen both ends and throw it as hard as you can at somebody’s eyeball.

In Suffolk VA, a pencil becomes a weapon “when it’s pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.”

Got that?  Something (a pencil) actually becomes something else (a gun) when certain noises are made. So apparently if little Billy is on his bicycle and makes “Vroom! Vroom!” motorcycle noises, his bicycle is, in fact, a motorcycle and he could be ticketed for not having a license.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the playground, little Sally has balled up her jacket and stuffed it under her shirt to play “expectant mommy”.  As we have all learned, her jacket can become an actual baby if “baby noises are made”.

But the administrators aren’t worried about Sally.  After all, she can pick up some Plan B at any neighborhood Walgreen’s…..

Bashar Assad just stepped over it, so says Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel today.

He said the chemical weapons found were sarin, and said it is likely the regime of Syria’s Bashar Assad was behind the use of the weapons.

Asked if this crossed a “red line” for the U.S., Hagel said they are still trying to assess.

“It violates every convention of warfare,” he said.

President Obama has said the use of chemical weapons would be a “game-changer” in the U.S. position on intervening in the two-year-old Syrian civil war.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., suggested the “red line” had been crossed.

Well of course President Decisive is still trying to figure out if using chemical weapons “really, truly, for sure no foolsies” happened and whether that actually constitutes crossing the red line that Obama laid out when he said  “there would be “enormous consequences” if Assad failed to safeguard his weapons of mass destruction.”

Enormous is sort of a relative term I guess.  Maybe by ‘enormous’ Obama was referencing the impact to himself personally.  “If Assad doesn’t safeguard his weapons of mass destruction, it’s going to have an enormous consequence– I will actually have to play President instead of playing golf.”

More below the fold…

Yes, we’ve hashed through this argument before: Not all Muslims are terrorists, but most terrorists seem to be Muslims.  So what?  The same argument can be made about Catholic Priests (not all Priests are pedophiles, but an awful lot of pedophiles seem to be Catholic Priests).

The difference? Well, it isn’t minor:  I know of no Catholic (strike that — no Christian) that is not outraged by the abuse of children.  I know of no Christian that defends the perpetrators of these crimes. I know of no Christian that advocates violence against children as a doctrine of their religion.   In one of his first official acts, Pope Francis called for zero tolerance and for the Vatican to “act with determination” to rid these criminals from the Church.

But where are the vocal Muslims?   What is the Islamic leadership doing to thwart the violence?  As I’ve said before…crickets.  Meanwhile, the purported mere “small minority” of “Radicalized Islamists” continue to openly vent their hatred and planned destruction of all things not Muslim.

I can think of no better piece than that written by Paul E. Marek, a second-generation Canadian, whose grandparents fled Czechoslovakia just prior to the Nazi takeover.  It is titled “Why the Peaceful Islamist is Irrelevant”.  The Op-Ed (written 6 years ago, btw) is spot on and is included in its entirety below the fold.

It starts out with this: “History lessons are often incredibly simple”.

More below the fold…

14 wounded, some critically.

You cannot legislate evil out of the hearts of men. 14 people….with a KNIFE. And banning knives is no more the solution than banning guns. The tool used is irrelevant–guns, knives or clubs — crazy, violent people will always exist. The question is how best to protect ourselves and loved ones from them.

..you get a little nuclear terroristic when you’re hungry.

Ok, let’s take a Revo Poll:

Who thinks North Korea is going to do something utterly stupid (i.e. attack S. Korea) OR do something so utterly stupid that we will have to do something proactively (i.e. attack N. Korea)?

I am not feeling good about this.  Or this.  And especially this.

Remember, on this date (April 5th 2009)  North Korea launched the Kwangmyongsong-2 rocket, prompting an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council.  Will they pull a repeat?  This might mean yes…..

(NOTE: RD notes that it is already April 6th over there, but still….and how they got his military ID photo for the poster above is beyond me.)

So, Revoistas, will we have hostilities in the “Prosperous and Great County” of North Korea?

Man shoots tree; tree fires back.

A man in Iowa is currently in hospital recovering from an injury he sustained after a tree he was using for target practice fired back at him.

According to initial reports, 27-year-old Logan Bunn was shooting at tree outside his home near Lansing when one of the bullets ricocheted, striking him in an unspecified body part.

Bunn arrived at a La Crosse hospital with non-life-threatening injuries, prompting staffers to notify local police.

Authorities in Allamakee County are still investigating the bizarre incident which occurred early Sunday morning, but say no foul play is suspected.

No word on whether alcohol was a factor.

From the Comments:

–”No word on whether alcohol was a factor.”

If it was a pine tree then I’m sure it was drunk. Fucking pines can’t hold their liquor worth a damn.

This poor fellow, age 7, was enjoying a Pop Tart for breakfast at school.  He ate it the wrong way and got suspended.  Anyone want to wager a guess why?

More below the fold…

As we all know, the LA Police are on a manhunt for a renegade whack-job cop who is shooting up the town.  Apparently, the police are responding in kind

Two women who were shot by Los Angeles police in Torrance early Thursday during a massive manhunt for an ex-LAPD officer were delivering newspapers, sources said.

The women, shot in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue, were taken to area hospitals, Torrance police Lt. Devin Chase said. They were not identified. One was shot in the hand and the other in the back, according to Jesse Escochea, who captured video of the victims being treated.

It was not immediately known what newspapers the women were delivering. After the shooting, the blue pickup was riddled with bullet holes and what appeared to be newspapers lay in the street alongside.

OK, so the mental case is driving a blue pickup.   I guess LAPD’s solution is to open fire on any blue pickup they see? Shoot ‘em all and let God sort them out?  This concerns me; I also drive a blue pickup.  I mean, really?  LOOK AT THAT TRUCK!

You’re looking for a large black male and end up shooting TWO female news delivery people? Two?  In the back?  Methinks that’s going to a difficult shooting to justify.  Maybe if they didn’t have high capacity ammunition clips replete with pistol grips and bayonet  lugs this never would have happened.

Can we agree that, in general, school administers have collectively lost their fucking minds?  This chap is getting suspended.  You see, he violated the school’s zero tolerance policy regarding weapons.  Would you like to know what the policy prohibits?

The school has a list of ‘absolutes’ that states no weapons, even if they’re imaginary.

You see, Alex Watkins was out to save the world at recess and in the process of doing so, threw an imaginary hand grenade.  Yes, you read that correctly: Imaginary.  But he didn’t get an imaginary suspension — he got removed from school on a weapons violation.

I remember way back when schools used to encourage imagination and imaginative play.  When sticks were guns, the back yard was the African jungle and your Labrador was the fierce lion trophy you sought.

Now, you will get suspended for your stick gun, the Enviro-Nazi’s will tell you that stomping through Mother  Gaia is environmentally criminal, PETA will subpoena you for stalking the dog.

And we wonder why kids are all fucked up.

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It is indeed a puzzler.  An Iowa law maker wants to make it a felony for a mother to pass an illegal substance to a fetus.

The bill would make passing illegal substances from a mother to a fetus a Class B felony, punishable by up to five years in prison or up to a $7,500 fine.

Republican Rep. Clel Baudler of Greenfield says his bill sends the message that “using illegal drugs will not be tolerated” and that incarceration is an effective means to force drug-using pregnant women to get clean.

I get this general idea here.  Mothers should not be taking illegal drugs; it harms their unborn children.  But the elephant in the room, so to speak, is that it is currently LEGAL for mothers to KILL their unborn children.  So killing them via abortion is OK, but passing along a little weed is now a felony?  WTF?

Does anyone see the ‘ole law of unintended consequences creeping into this POS legislation?

DA: ” Ma’am, you are being charged with  possession and use of marijuana, which is a misdemeanor punishable by a $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail.  However, your current medical records indicate you are three months pregnant, correct? As such, the transference of a controlled substance to an unborn child is a Class D felony in Iowa punishable by a $7,500 fine and up to 5 years in jail.”

Mother: “Really?.  A felony, huh? I see.  Oh, by the way, I intend to have an abortion tomorrow, which is within my medical rights, so let’s talk about that whole “Class D Felony” thing with my lawyer next week, OK?”

I know, I know.  Our educational system is such a target-rich topic that its hard not to be overwhelmed by the the sheer magnitude of examples.  Whether it’s stupid “zero tolerance”  rules, teachers sleeping with students or kids graduating without a basic ability to read, you can pick up any daily newspaper and find example after example after example.

So I share this post only as a selfish rant–a “Vanagram Vent”– but perhaps there may be some nugget of value for others in this personal story should you wish to indulge me.  So, the set up:

More below the fold…

I just do.  I give up trying have logical, rational conversations with people who refuse to do the same.  I was discussing “gun control”  with a parent on my daughter’s swim team.  You just can’t break through the emotional stranglehold these people have about guns (and more so the absurd “ban” on select kinds of guns or a arbitrary amount of bullets as a solution).  What we need is a “people ban” not a gun ban.  That, or as much as it pains my libertarian soul, a license to become a parent.

Take this fellow above for example.  Gee, who could have seen this coming?

• Griego was a “military obsessed loner who enjoyed playing violent video games like Modern Warfare and Grand Theft Auto.”
• “Local residents of the teenager described a lonesome boy who was always wearing camouflage fatigues and admitted to police he had been plagued by suicidal and homicidal thoughts”.
• “Nehemiah was not registered with the school district so he was thought to be home schooled.”
• He kill them “because he was ‘annoyed with’ his mother.”

So, we have an under-socialized home-schooled loner obsessed with violent video games, wearing fatigues with anger management and mommy issues.  With unfettered access to legally obtained firearms. But, it’s not his fault, it’s because of a gun.  It’s elementary, my dear Watson.  Speaking of guns…

More below the fold…

Indeed.  Holidays should be banned.  Parades should be banned, too.

 Five teenagers shot on Martin Luther King Day.  While standing on Martin Luther King Boulevard.  During a Martin Luther King Parade.

There’s something funny going on in the universe today (this theory is furthered by Barack Obama being sworn in as President of the United States.  For a second time, none the less.  Weird.)  When the universe acts weird, you should listen.

Ergo, below the fold you can find where I will be milling about later. Just in case.

More below the fold…

Stock up 

Beginning today, the 75-watt incandescent lightbulb has been banned from production and importation in the United States. That’s right – as soon as stores clear their shelves of their current stock, you won’t be able to buy a 75-watt incandescent lightbulb anymore.